GOP to Reid: You’re next

By CHARLES MAHTESIAN

08/05/2012 01:27 PM EDT

The Sunday news shows featured a rare spectacle that at once revealed the decline of civility in Washington and the depth of GOP outrage over Harry Reid’s unproven claim that Mitt Romney didn’t pay income taxes for an entire decade: two of the nation’s top GOP officials flat out called the Senate majority leader a liar.

That’s no ordinary criticism in official Washington.

There are plenty of other ways that pols use to call out their partisan rivals on their statements. Reid’s GOP counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for one, has already said Reid’s charge is “beneath the dignity” of his office.

“As far as Harry Reid is concerned, listen, you might want to go down that road, I'm not going to respond to a dirty liar, who hasn't filed a single page of tax returns himself,” Priebus said on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. “He complains about money but lives in the Ritz Carlton here, down the street. If this is on the agenda, I'm not going to go there. This is just a made-up issue. The fact that we're going to spend any time talking about it is just ridiculous."

South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham also slammed Reid, accusing him of “lying.”

“I've been around this town for a while. I actually like Harry,” Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “But what he did on the floor of the Senate is so out of bounds. I think he's lying about his statement of knowing something about Romney.”

They weren’t the only top GOP officials ripping the Senate majority leader Sunday in unusually personal terms.

"This is a reckless and slanderous charge by Harry Reid," Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said on "Face the Nation." "This is a guy who hasn’t released his own returns and for three years, can't get a budget passed in the United States Senate."

Both Priebus and Graham knew exactly what they were doing. The RNC followed up Priebus’s criticism with a press release including the “dirty liar” description. Graham also had a chance to clean up his remarks — recognizing the gravity of the senator’s assertion, CNN host Candy Crowley sought to confirm that Graham thought Reid was lying. Graham reiterated his claim.

“I think he's making things up," Graham said. “Let's start talking about the real issues that matter to real people and I just can't let that pass. I just cannot believe that the majority leader of the United States Senate would take the floor twice, make accusations that are absolutely unfounded, in my view, and quite frankly making things up to divert the camp campaign away from the real issues.”

POLITICO’s Manu Raju wrote Friday that Reid remained unruffled by the flap, and “has calculated that the frenzy created by his charge has accomplished exactly what he sought to do: Turn the focus back onto the GOP nominee’s unreleased tax returns.”

Now, though, the GOP has indicated it plans to make it personal. Between the loaded language and Priebus’s pointed reference to Reid’s Ritz-Carlton abode — an issue that surfaced in the senator’s 2010 reelection campaign — Republicans just sent the clearest signal to Reid yet that he needs to produce the evidence, stand down or prepare for an extended public discussion of his own finances.